‘A dead-end case, for the first time in how many years?’
Sævaldur forked pasta quickly. ‘Who knows? There have been unsolved disappearances, like the woman a few years ago who took her dog for a walk and was never seen again. But you’re right, an unsolved murder hasn’t happened since. .’ He tore at a roll and messily mopped up some sauce. ‘Not since long before our time.’
‘How about your housebreaker?’ she asked to change the subject, although she knew it was a sore point and that he was concerned it could become something of a joke.
‘He’s a sly bastard,’ Sævaldur growled, tapping too much pepper onto the remains of his lunch. ‘Not a damned clue, no fingerprints, no CCTV, no sightings.’
‘Sure it’s just one person?’
Sævaldur took a mouthful and swallowed it down without chewing, while the pepper made him cough and his already red face went a shade darker.
‘That’s what the Laxdal said. I reckon it’s just one housebreaker. Ívar thinks it’s a gang, or else more than one burglar operating separately, stealing stuff to order.’
‘So why do you reckon it’s just one man?’ Gunna asked, gradually losing her appetite as Sævaldur forked down a few more rapid mouthfuls before replying.
‘Law of averages. One, we know most of the villains in the city. If it was a group of some kind, we’d get a whisper of it from someone sooner or later, because these people can’t help falling out or getting drunk and spilling the beans somewhere,’ he said, putting his fork down. He bent one finger back with the forefinger of the other hand. ‘Two,’ he said with emphasis, now with two fingers bent back, ‘the chances of a small place like Reykjavík producing two skilled housebreakers operating at the same time is just too slim. Three, there are too many similarities.’
He released his fingers and returned to wielding his fork like a man who’d been starved of a square meal.
‘Unless it’s a gang from somewhere or other?’
‘Lithuania or Poland or somewhere? Yeah, could be,’ Sævaldur conceded.
‘Different times of day or night, all kinds of properties. You sure it’s just one person?’
Sævaldur narrowed his eyes but didn’t stop eating. ‘He’s versatile, that’s all.’
‘But that also indicates more than one pattern, don’t you think?’
‘No, there are still too many similarities,’ he said, pushing his plate away and opening a tub of yoghurt. ‘No entry damage, which is unusual in itself. He never forces anything. Locks are picked or he uses doors that are left unlocked. There’s no mess. He doesn’t empty drawers and cupboards all over the place. He’s so discreet that some of his victims don’t know they’ve been robbed until they go to look for something and it’s not there. Consequently we have no idea when many of these break-ins took place, and I’d guess there must be a bunch of them out there that haven’t even been noticed yet. On top of that, the stuff never shows up, ever.’
‘Zero recovery?’
‘Absolutely nothing. This guy is taking cash, mostly foreign currency, or so it seems. He’s taking jewellery, electronics, that sort of stuff.’
‘So it’s going abroad?’
‘That or it’s being stashed away somewhere for a rainy day, which is unlikely, I reckon,’ Sævaldur said, staring moodily out of the window.
‘None of this stuff ever appears?’
‘Nothing. Not one single piece. We have serial numbers, photographs of valuables, all sorts. We’ve been watching the small ads on the internet, the flea market at Kolaport, even eBay. Nothing so far.’
‘It’s going abroad, no question.’
‘Just what I thought,’ Sævaldur said, as if reluctantly agreeing with her. ‘I’m going to be leaning hard on all the fences we know, and I’d better make some progress before a journalist notices and Reykjavík’s silent housebreaker hits the newspapers. So if you know anyone worth leaning on that we don’t have on our list, let me know and I’ll go and give them a kicking.’
‘No one that I can think of,’ Gunna said, pushing her plate aside. ‘But you might want to have a word with Eiríkur. An old lady called the other day about some jewellery she’d seen in a shop window that looked like hers, and when she got home, she found that she’d been burgled and hadn’t noticed.’
Sævaldur’s eyes shone. ‘Really? None of our guy’s stuff ever shows up, so I don’t expect it’ll be the same one. but I’ll ask Eiríkur what he’s found. A damn shame I’m having to look after this and the Borgarfjördur case on my own with half of my crowd of layabouts on courses or sick leave. These next few days I’m leaving my boys to continue knocking on doors up there and I’ll manage things from here, which means I can get back to looking for our sneak thief,’ he said, letting his fork clatter onto his plate. ‘Eiríkur’s doing all right is he?’
Gunna opened her mouth and was on the point of telling Sævaldur of her concerns about Eiríkur, but then she remembered how often she and Sævaldur had clashed in the past and thought better of it.
‘Ach, I don’t know. He’s had a rough time, what with the baby being premature. He’ll be all right when he’s back into the routine.’
‘Pussy-whipped, I reckon,’ Sævaldur said in a loud voice, and a girl from the social insurance office across the road that shared the police canteen gave him a dirty look that Sævaldur completely failed to notice as he inspected the point of a toothpick he’d used to excavate behind a molar. ‘In my day. .’
‘In your day women were pregnant every year, didn’t drive cars and did as they were told,’ Gunna said in a louder voice than was strictly necessary. ‘They had a hot meal ready at seven on the dot every night, did it twice a week in the missionary position and were damned grateful for it, right? But since then we have found our way into the twenty-first century and one or two things have changed.’
‘More’s the pity,’ he said wistfully. ‘All right, it was just an opinion. No need to come over all feminist on me, Gunna.’
‘Now, did you check those three out for me?’
‘Yeah, I did.’ Eiríkur shuffled through the papers that were already accumulating on his desk and came up with a sheet of notes. ‘Right. Natalia Rodriguez, Chilean citizen. She’s lived in Iceland since 2003. She has a child with a local guy called Hjörtur Helgi Grétarsson. She’s here legally, work permit and residence permit in order. Emilija Plaudis, Latvian citizen, and as an EU citizen she’s here legally. Divorced, her former husband’s Icelandic, name of Ingi Antonsson. Two children. Been here since 2006,’ Eiríkur read out.
‘And the casualty? Valmira?’
‘Valmira Vukoja. She’s a naturalized Icelandic citizen, originally from Krajina. Came to Iceland in 1996 as one of half a dozen families of refugees with her mother, sister and an uncle. The mother died a few years ago. The younger sister went back to Krajina about five years back and the uncle still lives here, married to a local woman in Hellissandur and isn’t going anywhere.’
‘All that’s in the Immigration Directorate’s files?’ Gunna asked. ‘They don’t normally come up with answers that fast.’
‘Well, not quite. But I know someone who works there and she gave me a little background detail. There’s more, actually,’ Eiríkur said, and Gunna was aware that Sævaldur on the far side of the room was listening carefully, in spite of his show of being engrossed in his computer. ‘Valmira Vukoja was quite badly injured at some point, and patched up as well as could be expected in the circumstances, considering where she came from was a war zone at the time. So she spent quite a lot of her first year or two here in and out of hospital. But she did extremely well at school, learned the language quickly and well enough to get through university with a degree in business and modern languages.’